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Page 70
It was a most unpleasant journey. There was some kind of choral society
on the train, occupying seven or eight compartments of the third-class
coach in which I was travelling. For the first few hours they made night
hideous with part-songs, catches and glees chanted with a volume of
sound that in that confined place was simply deafening. Then the noise
abated as one by one the singers dropped off to sleep. Presently silence
fell, while the train rushed forward in the darkness bearing me towards
fresh perils, fresh adventures.
* * * * *
A gust of fresh air in my face, the trample of feet, loud greetings in
guttural German, awoke me with a start. It was broad daylight and
through my compartment, to which I had crept in the night, weary with
standing, filed the jovial members of the choral society, with bags in
their hands and huge cockades in their buttonholes. There was a band on
the platform and a huge choir of men who bawled a stentorian-voiced hymn
of greeting. "D�sseldorf" was the name printed on the station lamps.
All the passengers, save the members of the choral society, had left the
train, apparently, for every carriage door stood open. I sprang to my
feet and let myself go with the stream of men. Thus I swept out of the
train and right into the midst of the jostling crowd of bandsmen,
singers and spectators on the platform. I stood with the new arrivals
until the hymn was ended and thus solidly _encadr�s_ by the
D�sseldorfers, we drifted out through the barrier into the station
courtyard. There brakes were waiting into which the jolly choristers,
guests and hosts, clambered noisily. But I walked straight on into the
streets, scarcely able to realize that no one had questioned me, that at
last, unhindered, I stood before my goal.
D�sseldorf is a bright, clean town with a touch of good taste in its
public buildings to remind one that this busy, industrial city has found
time even while making money to have called into being a school of art
of its own. It was a delightful morning with dazzling sunshine and an
eager nip in the air that spoke of the swift, deep river that bathes the
city walls. I revelled in the clear, cold atmosphere after the foulness
of the drinking-den and the stifling heat of the journey. I exulted in
the sense of liberty I experienced at having once more eluded the grim
clutches of Clubfoot. Above all, my heart sang within me at the thought
of an early meeting with Francis. In the mood I was in, I would admit no
possibility of disappointment now. Francis and I would come together at
last.
I came upon a public square presently and there facing me was a great,
big caf�, white and new and dazzling, with large plate-glass windows
and rows of tables on a covered verandah outside. It was undoubtedly a
"_kolossal_" establishment after the best Berlin style. So that there
might be no mistake about the name it was placarded all over the front
of the place in gilt letters three feet high on glass panels--Caf�
Regina.
It was about nine o'clock in the morning and at that early hour I had
the place to myself. I felt very small, sitting at a tiny table, with
tables on every side of me, stretching away as it were into the
_Ewigkeit_, in a vast white room with mural paintings of the crassest
school of impressionism.
I ordered a good, substantial breakfast and whiled away the time while
it was coming by glancing at the morning paper which the waiter brought
me.
My eyes ran down the columns without my heeding what I read, for my
thoughts were busy with Francis. When did he come to the caf�? How was
he living at D�sseldorf?
Suddenly, I found myself looking at a name I knew ... it was in the
personal paragraphs.
"Lieut.-General Count von Boden," the paragraph ran, "Aide-de-Camp to
H.M. the Emperor, has been placed on the retired list owing to
ill-health. General von Boden has left for Abbazia, where he will take
up his permanent residence." There followed the usual biographical
notes.
Of a truth, Clubfoot was a power in the land.
I ate my breakfast at a table by the open door, and surveyed the busy
life of the square where the pigeons circled in the sunshine. A waiter
stood on the verandah idly watching the birds as they pecked at the
stones. I was struck with the profound melancholy depicted in his face.
His cheeks were sunken and he had a pinched look which I had observed in
the features of most of the customers at Haase's. I set it down to the
insufficient feeding which is general among the lower classes in Germany
to-day.
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